Lets get into details then:
Continents. Yes, we all agree we want the sancs back, no footholds, and links between continents. But, theres a problem: There need to be a bunch of continents to make this work. And as it seems, there wont be as much continents around for launch, would mean that getting a meaningful lattience together would be kinda hard. Yet, with more continents, this would be totally possible, and something that simply HAS to be done. Higby answered what they want to happen in the AMAA:
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2) How will you keep fights intense throught the day through changes in population through prime time, late night, early morning, etc.
We'll spool up fewer server generated missions with lower population. I'm hoping what will happen is there will be fewer simultaneous battles, but the battles will be just as intense.
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To be fair, he has no idea. Yes, there will be fewer simultaneous battles, and they may be just as intense, but a rather large problem pops up during off hours: Ghost hacks. They where annoying as fuck sometimes, but with the territory system, i see them getting much whorse. Not just that, during off hours, when the pop is low, its likley that pop imbalance happens. The Basic formula is that the higher the overall population is, the closer it gets to 33% for each faction. During off hours, especially early morning, you would see empires having 40% or even more pop, global. On top of that, most would try to go to the big battle, means one continent may get a pop lock, but the others are left in the dark, makes them targets for happy ghost hackers. This could lead to situations where you log off after an intense evening on Cyssor, with each empire holding about 33% of the continent, and log on the next moring to see one empire holding most, if not all, of cyssor, just because the late night pop went to Indar, and the overpopped empire just ghosted Cyssor, because they can.
This needs to be adressed. But how? Well, this is how:
Obviously Ghost hacking needs to stay in game, as it is a vital thing. It replaces the Tech plant Gen holds of old. But there needs to be a way to to stop late night continent ghost hacks, or at least make them hard, without adding artificial game systems.
Sanctuarys, and therefore the ability to lock a continent and a lattience between conts, would fix the issue mostly. To put it simple, you cannot hack into every territory on a locked cont, you can only hack the territory next to a warpgate that leads to a continent where you own the territory next to the warpgate. Or in other words, exactly the same as in planetside right now: You can only hack Dagda on Forseral, if you own the base that is conneted to it via the warpgate. Once you have a single territory, feel free to hack any other territory on the continent, but the same rules apply as always (the more territory you have conneted to the territory you hack, the faster the hack goes).
This wouldnt prevent ghost hacks, but it makes them only possible if you have a link. To get back to the eariler example of Cyssor and Indar: The same could still happen, means the night pop goes to Indar and one empire just ghosts Cyssor. BUT, after that, they cant just head everywhere else and repeat for the rest of the night, they only have a small list of targets they can go to. A list small enough that makes it possible to defend them. This makes it much more likley that those guys who just got cyssor head for the big fight on indar for the rest of the night, with only a handful of ghost hackers roaming around.
Enough words? Or should i type some more?
